


That Beautiful Sound

by FictionPenned



Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Depression, Discussions of death, Gen, but then this fic goes entirely off the rails, canon-typical beetlejuice stuff really, discussion of the loss of a parent, first chapter contains a paraphrased scene from the musical, i don't make the rules, if the doctor is allowed to peter pan a companion, shenangins ahoy, the Master's TARDIS living its best life as a cardboard box, the master being a troll, then the master can beetlejuice a companion, this is just how it is, would be tagged T but is tagged M for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24031840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: “I should really kill you,” a strikingly British voice says, worn absolutely ragged from either screaming or crying, though Lydia can’t tell which it might have been.Lydia peels her eyes from the floor and dares to look up, staring into the silver-tainted brown of the stranger’s eyes. A shrug ripples across his shoulders, as fluid and exaggerated as a dance and a grin splits his face, gleaming white against the thick veneer of orange dirt and the dark shadows that dominate the musty attic.“But lucky for you, I’m currently in need of a favor. What do you say, human, you up for a bit of a chat?"A smile spreads across her lips, the same smile that she wears whenever she’s grappling for the upper hand with Delia. When she speaks, the words are full to the brim with dry, cloying saccharine sweetness. “Who am I to deny an audience with a ghost?”The Master strikes a deal and finds an unlikely and slightly contentious traveling companion in Lydia Deetz. When the Doctor finds out, she is less than pleased. Shenanigans ensue.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	That Beautiful Sound

Lydia Deetz does not think about death a normal amount. She contemplates it every second of every day. Every beat of her heart, every twitch of her fingers, every sound of footsteps on the creaky old floorboards of this house reminds her that life is short and cruel and sometimes people drop out of it and leave gaping holes behind. She feels the void her mother left in the loss of her name on her father's lips and the constant yearning of her own soul. Lydia was her mother's daughter through and through -- a strange and unusual creature thrust into a world that is not always kind to strange and unusual things.  
  
It certainly has not been kind to her.   
  
If it was, there would be more than death and her father's silence and the foreboding silhouettes of horrid modern art in the hallways. They would still be in their home, surrounded by memories of her mother. There would be no step-wannabe Delia, no creaky floorboards, no grief so great that it threatens to rip her apart.   
  
She sometimes wishes that she died instead. That would have been easier than facing down a dozen adults who want her to be normal while she wants nothing more than to scream her pain loud enough to make sure that someone starts listening, but she just keeps being ignored. Invisible, inconvenient, _incorrigible_ Lydia Deetz.  
  
She enters the living room while dragging her feet, casting a single, irritated glance in the direction of her father and his redheaded consort before throwing herself dramatically upon the couch in a storm of black lace. “Hey, dad,” she drawls as she folds her hands over her heart and stares up at the ceiling with a meticulously practiced blank expression, “Does this couch make me look dead?”   
  
“Please don’t talk like that, Lydia,” her father says in the weary tones of a man who has had this conversation one too many times. The palm of his hand rubs his chin, scraping across the beard that he hasn’t bothered to shave since the funeral. “Delia, could you talk to her?”  
  
With an irritated huff, Lydia swings booted feet onto the unforgiving hardwood of the floor. The collection of safety pins threaded through the straps jangle too brightly to reflect the darkness that marks her perpetual mood, especially when dreaded Delia is thrown in her direction. Delia, though she has currently taken to trying to worm her way into the family, was initially brought into the household to act as Lydia’s life coach and draw her out from the “phase” that she’ll “surely grow out of eventually.” Lydia doesn’t care for the crystal-speaking, feels-having, slogan-spouting that Delia offers. None of it makes her feel better. It doesn’t change the fact that her mom died. It doesn’t change the fact that her father doesn’t want to interact with her unless she’s willing to feign the part of glowing, perfect daughter, and it most certainly doesn’t change the fact that Lydia feels completely and utterly alone. She has no friends. Her family has fallen to pieces. She has _nothing left_.   
  
“Come now, Lydia,” Delia says a touch too enthusiastically, sliding onto the couch with an almost theatrical flourish. “What did we say about the sadness?”  
  
Mischief sparkles in Lydia’s eyes, and she raises her voice a bit louder, just to make sure that her father can hear her from his position across the room.“That you _need_ this job, and, _like_ , I can’t go ruining it for you?” Every word drips with mocking contempt.  
  
“No!” The protest comes a bit too quickly and a bit too sharply to be convincing. The slightest of smirks snakes across Lydia’s lips as she watches the woman turn to glance over her shoulder, checking to see if the claim was believed. “No. I _said_ \--” She pauses, reaching out for Lydia’s hands, but Lydia steps backwards, lip curling in utter disdain. “-- I _said_ that sadness is like a kale salad. Nobody likes it, so throw it out.”  
  
The girl’s eyes roll skyward. She doesn’t know how anyone buys that kind of bullshit. Grief doesn’t just go away because you want it to. It lingers like a hole in the world, sucking everything into its gravity until it starts devouring you, too. She will never get her mom back, and even though her dad might be able to forget, she’s neither that heartless nor that shallow. She will never just _forget_ about her mom. She will feel that loss for her entire life.   
  
“Maybe someone should throw you out,” she mumbles barely loud enough for Delia to hear.   
  
“ _Lydia!_ ”   
  
Lydia’s lips curl into an innocent smile as she clasps her hands behind her back and tilts her head sideways, black hair grazing the top of her shoulder. Her voice dances half an octave higher than it normally sits, the very picture of a teenage girl who has never stepped so much as a toe out of line. “What, Delia? Is something wrong?”   
  
“You’re not very nice.” The words are a hiss, too soft for anyone but Lydia to hear. “I’m just trying to help.”  
  
“You’re not helping. If you were, maybe you’d let me feel something for once.” Rage glitters in her eyes and a vein tightens in her forehead. Lydia isn’t built for physical confrontation, but she will not hesitate to rip Delia -- or _anyone_ , for that matter -- apart with a few well-chosen words.   
  
“I want you to be more positive. Isn’t it exhausting moping about in all that black?”   
  
Lydia glances down at her dress before looking back up. “I’m in _mourning_.”   
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Delia leans into the word and sidles a bit closer, trying to grasp onto this faint glimmer of opportunity. “But hasn’t it been awhile, dear? Isn’t it about time we started to think about other things? Like yellow and birdsong and _healing_?”  
  
There are a great number of things that Lydia would be willing to embrace long before she started wearing yellow. She didn’t even like yellow as a kid. It’s an aggressive color, meant for people who have nothing better to do than play tennis and swap gossip. “Victorians were required to engage in full mourning for at least two years before entering half mourning. It’s been a few months, so I’d say I have a great deal longer to go before I properly reenter society, wouldn’t you?”   
  
“Lydia --” Delia’s hands reach out again -- desperate, imploring.  
  
Lydia recoils, nose wrinkling in absolute disdain. “No.”  
  
“I give up,” Delia says, putting her open palms up in a gesture of surrender before stalking back towards the kitchen and Lydia’s father. “I don’t think today is her day,” she says once she reaches him, putting her hand on her shoulder and leaning in too close to be considered strictly _professional_.   
  
“I can hear you, you know,” Lydia says. Tears of pain and grief and anger gather at the corners of her eyes as she curls her gloved hands into fists at her sides. “I have _ears_. And a heart, which is more than I can say for either of you.” Her voice edges upwards until she’s practically shouting.   
  
“Lydia…” Her father starts, but Lydia’s vengeful stare cuts him short.   
  
“I’m not interested in what you have to say. You moved us away from her. You want me to forget her. I won’t!” Pain tears at the corners of her words and her heart beats so quickly and so loudly that she is afraid that it might shatter. Good. Being dead is probably better than being here and dealing with _them_. Maybe she’d even get to see her mom again, and spend eternity in her arms.   
  
One can only hope.   
  
“Kale salad!” Delia says loudly, doing her best to sound cheerful, but utterly failing to read the room.   
  
Lydia races up the stairs, taking them two at a time and skipping the one that creaks. No one follows her, and even though she doesn’t expect them to, she still manages to be disappointed. It’s just herself and her pain and the blank walls of a bedroom that still feels like someone else’s. She doesn’t know the names of the people who lived in this house before her father bought it to turn into a model home and move their broken family in permanently, but she knows that they died here. Some incident with the floorboards and the basement, apparently. She believes it. The floor slopes a bit and half the boards squeak when you walk on them. Her father apparently bought the place as an absolute steal. For some reason, nobody wants to live in a house that might be haunted.   
  
She doesn’t think she’d mind a few ghosts. Maybe she could manage to befriend them. Surely it couldn’t be any harder than trying to make friends with her peers in the lunchroom. Ghosts probably wouldn’t dodge her footsteps or whisper behind their hands about how weird the new girl is. Ghosts are probably even more strange and unusual than she is. After all, ghosts are _dead_. Maybe they’re even gross and moldy and horrifying for good measure. She thinks that she might be able to get on with someone who is a little bit horrifying.   
  
She falls back onto the bed with a heavy sigh, spreading her arms wide and pretending that she hasn’t a care in the world. It doesn’t work. She has too many cares. They weigh her down. They keep her from sleeping and from daydreaming and from feeling anything that isn’t all-consuming loss. Lydia doesn’t think that Delia’s ever really felt a loss like this, otherwise she wouldn’t be jumping around and rambling on about kale salads and other completely useless garbage. She mentioned something once about being left by her ex-husband when he sailed away to Rome without a word, but she doesn’t think that that is comparable to watching your mother slowly die.  
  
Besides, it sounds like her ex-husband was probably a bit of a douchebag. Not exactly the sort of guy that’s worth shedding tears over.   
  
Somewhere above her, a clatter sounds. Lydia bolts upright, peering at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. Nobody bothers to go into the attic -- not her father, not the contractors that pass in and out of the house, and certainly not Delia. Her heart leaps into her throat, born aloft by fragile hope. Maybe the house _is_ haunted. Maybe she’ll finally have a chance to swap words with somebody who is actually worth speaking to. Maybe she isn’t so alone after all.   
  
She swipes her old Polaroid camera off of the nightstand and hangs it around the neck, cradling its body in both hands as she slips out of her bedroom and towards the door that leads to the attic. She hugs the wall as she walks. It’s easier to avoid creaky floorboards that way, and the last thing she wants is for someone to wonder what she might be getting up to and come up to investigate. Her heart pounds in her chest, in her ears, in the shaking fingers on her hand as she turns the knob on the door that leads to the attic, careful not to make any undue noise. She closes the door just as gently and begins to tip-toe up the stairs, boots leaving heavy footprints in the layer of dust that clings to the floor.   
  
Nothing up here has been disturbed since they moved in. Spiders hang between the exposed beams of the walls and ceiling and remnants of the lives of the couple who lived and died in this house are shoved in every available nook and cranny. There are cracked bits of homemade pottery, boxes of old pictures, a smattering of unfinished projects. They speak to a boring life, but it was probably a respectable one. Lydia wonders if they, too, object to the horrible modern art that has taken up residence on the lower floors. She’ll make a note to ask them just in case they are haunting this house and willing to be friends with her.   
  
Slowly she turns the corner and then freezes as soon as she sees a man sitting in a corner, crouched beside a refrigerator box with his chin resting in his hand. He doesn’t look like a ghost, but that means he might be a burglar or a murderer. Maybe there’s a serial killer living in their attic. She’d read about a case like that on an unsolved mysteries blog. Maybe she should turn around and yell for help, but she isn’t in the mood to confer with the living. If she dies in this attack, she dies in this attic. Better than dying in the insufferable decor of the living room.  
  
She takes a step closer, drifting behind her own pile of boxes and straining her eyes to get a good look at him.   
  
He’s covered in a distinct layer of orange dirt that doesn’t match the greyness of the dust that dominates the rest of the attic. It looks like he’s rolled on a desert floor in the middle of a sandstorm, and it clings to each fiber of his clothes and every exposed bit of skin, aside from the bit of his dark beard and the brown tips of his fingers where he’s rubbed it away. She wonders how long he’s been sitting here like that, repeating the motion over and over again.   
  
Lydia holds her breath and slides a bit closer, dropping to her knees as the pile of boxes slopes a bit lower and provides a bit less cover.   
  
The scent of smoke whispers against her nose, but there’s something odd about it, something off. Lydia would describe it as almost unworldly, but she doesn’t know what other worlds smell like. She doesn’t even know if they even exist. She believes in ghosts because she has to believe in ghosts -- it is the only hope she has of ever seeing her mother again -- but she would not go so far as to say that she believes that intelligent life on other planets or faeries from another dimension would bother with settling into dusty old attics on Earth.   
  
If _she_ was a faerie or an alien, she’d probably have better things to do than mope about in an attic. A _ghost_ , on the other hand --  
  
Silver flashes beneath the seemingly impenetrable dust, moving so swiftly that it might have been a trick of the light, but it’s the very sort of thing that Lydia is desperately hoping for. Silver like ghosts. Silver like the dead finding life again. Silver like her mother might be, somewhere.   
  
She releases her held breath and takes another one as she slides a bit closer, but her foot knocks against one of the dreadful ceramic jugs, toppling it over.   
  
The sound echoes through the room and the stranger’s head snaps up as he surveys the room. His eyes are panicked, desperate, even -- and lined in the same silver that she caught a glimpse of a moment ago. She presses her palms flat to the floor and keeps as low as she can, desperately that he doesn’t see her.   
  
She is not so lucky.  
  
Footsteps cross the expanse of dusty floor between them -- she doesn’t remember any recorded encounters where ghosts were reported to make actual, tangible footsteps -- and the box directly in front of her is nudged aside by a dirty loafer.  
  
“I should _really_ kill you,” a strikingly British voice says, worn absolutely ragged from either screaming or crying, though Lydia can’t tell which it might have been.  
  
Lydia peels her eyes from the floor and dares to look up, staring into the silver-tainted brown of the stranger’s eyes. A shrug ripples across his shoulders, as fluid and exaggerated as a dance and a grin splits his face, gleaming white against the thick veneer of orange dirt and the dark shadows that dominate the musty attic.  
  
“But lucky for you, I’m currently in need of a favor. What do you say, human, you up for a bit of a _chat_ _?_ "

A smile spreads across her lips, the same smile that she wears whenever she’s grappling for the upper hand with Delia. When she speaks, the words are full to the brim with dry, cloying saccharine sweetness. “Who am I to deny an audience with a ghost?”


End file.
